Is is more profitable to build a Carrier from BPCs or BPOs? That question was the initial spark that started my interest in capital production in 2011. Using a BPC copy pack from the market was hardly profitable so I made a plan to own and operate a set of capital BPOs.

Over time as profits started to materialize, more BPOs were purchased to round out production queues. Carrier success then started to bleed into Dreadnought production. With the upcoming industry changes in the Crius expansion, the fate of my capital operation is unknown so I have paused the project.

Here are the final numbers for almost 3 years (2.93 to be exact) of capital production. Note that Dreadnought production was a recent addition, only starting in mid-2013. Special tribute goes to my industry partner, Raath, as he was the lead on this massive project.

tl;dr Build Naglfars and Archons.

Sales

Performance

Naglfar sales in Delve outperformed all other types and regions yet showed the most standard deviation.

The Naglfar outperformed every other hull type when it came to profitability per time period. This is due to the balance update it received in the Odyssey update where it became a viable doctrine ship. The Archon, due to the popularity of the Slowcat doctrine, was also solid performer.

After waiting for a few research jobs to finish up, I tore down the Highsec research POS and consolidated all the materials used for capital production. I am not sure about the viability of Lowsec capital production with the upcoming changes in the Crius expansion slated for July 22nd.

Presently I have more questions than answers.

How is the mandated refine differential between High-Low-Null going to affect build prices?

Will Low-Null mining become a profession that can compete with ore import costs from Highsec?

How will the general population buy capitals if the majority of them start to be delivered in sovereign Nullsec space?

Are the logistics of moving compressed ore from Highsec into Low-Null going to be worth the ::effort::?

Will capital prices eventually trend upward due to the lack of construction in Lowsec and cause Lowsec operations to become competitive with Nullsec?

Will Nullsec entities provide protection for large-scale mining operations in their space?

Will a competitive NPC Nullsec-Lowsec market spring up around major construction hubs?

I haven’t had the time or inclination to research these topics in depth; I hope to become motivated when the Crius changes start to hit the test server.

Carrier building operations have been running for 1,087 days and has generated 53.7 B in profit averaging 234.6 M/hull with a sale every 4.7 days.

There was a slight dip in production due to relocating our Capital building operations and my move across the country around November of 2013. Since then we’ve been steadily optimizing our operations and final March production counts came in at 17 hulls, almost matching our maximum of 19 in May of 2013.

Profit Charts

The profit trends on all hulls show a downward trend.

Chimera and Archon hulls are still holding strong while Thanatos and Nidhoggur hulls are not worth producing.

Future

We are not the only capital builder noticing shrinking profits as noted also by EVE-Fail. The upcoming mineral compression changes have us rethinking our logistical operation and possibly putting our capital building operations on hold.

With the stabilization of the Fountain and Delve regions over the past few months, the amount of sales we have seen in our building system have decreased. Raath made a command decision to leave the region in search for greener pastures.

Operation Performance

Our time in G-TT5V spanned 385 days where we built 162 capital hulls to sell on the local market. Our sales totaled 221.4 B ISK with a total profit coming in at 43.3 B. Performance metrics show a margin of 4.1%, an average of 3.4 B per month in profit, and a velocity of 5.06 hulls moved per week.

Top Performers

Given the balance changes to the Naglfar hull that came in the Odyssey update, we have seen a very strong demand the the hull; it is not a surprise that it has been a top performer. If you want to mass build, pick the Archon or Thanatos.

After two months of Eve downtime to move across the country to start a new job, I wanted to report on how Capital sales have been performing as Raath has been leading the construction of capitals hulls in my absence.

Carrier Hulls

Looking at sales from 2012-06 to 2013-11, we are faced with shrinking margins on Carriers. With 139 data points covering over a year of sales, I think it is fairly easy to justify a trend from the data. The highest demand we saw was when TEST was defending Fountain, as the Slowcat doctrine was a training goal for a lot of pilots.

Dreadnought Hulls

We have a much smaller dataset to work with for Dreadnoughts as the BPOs and workflow for incorporating them into the production line was a fairly recent addition. With only six months of sales data, it is hard to draw a strong conclusion but the margins look to be holding stronger than Carriers. I attribute a lot of our strong numbers holding Dreadnoughts up primarily due to the Naglfar rebalance in the Odyssey expansion; their profit margins are holding up around 40% on average due to demand, and plus it is cool vertical hull.

Note: we are not building the Phoenix hull due to general terribleness.

Project has been running now for 239.5 days and has generated 33.2 B in profit averaging 304.9 M/hull with a sale every 2.19 days.

War is Good for Business

I am positioned to sell to anyone due to my building location as it is not a sovereign station. There was a noticeable uptick in armament when the Fountain campaign was announced in late April of 2013.

I leave for two weeks and you all accidentally the market. I was not able the participate in the Odyssey speculation, but I am enjoying catching up on it.

The wild swings that we are seeing in the Moon and Ice markets due to Odyssey adjustments made me reflect on the stability of the items that I trade.

I used my historical database to come up with a report to provide quantitative insight to help give values to the items that I instinctively know are high risk. Here is a snapshot of the lower and upper items listed in my Stability Report that covers three years of trading sorted by standard deviation (σ).

Here are some general observations about the items listed:

Basic minerals, ammo, and modules are the most stable.

Capital modules weigh in somewhere in the middle.

Tech2 ships fill the upper band of the report.

Tech3 hulls and associated Subsystems are randomly spread over the middle band.

Certain battleships are high on the report because their popularity has changed over time due to shifting fleet doctrines.

The Procurer BPO was an item that I speculated on heavily during the last patch, which netted very positive results.

Capital ships are subject to large swings due to mineral price changes.

A tenant of becoming a good trader is minimizing your risk while trying to maximize your rewards. My advice for new traders is to work with more stable items as shown in the shaded green area of my report; they are subject to less swing and therefore will help minimize risk. As your ISK resources grow, you can move into riskier items that will [hopefully] yield larger returns.